


Spathiphyllum

by Triddlegrl



Series: Batman Verse [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Univers - Dc comics, Alternate Universe, Batman Crossover fic, Dc Comic crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 10:18:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8098324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triddlegrl/pseuds/Triddlegrl
Summary: Ten years ago a young botanist named Kurt Hummel was declared 'tragically and irreversibly' insane. Betrayed by his professor he became the super powered villain Lima City knows as Poison Ivy. When a tragedy even Batman can't prevent strikes Lima he learns in the most unexpected way that you can't always trust a diagnosis. Maybe this is his story of redemption. It's probably just an odd little story about hope. It springs eternal.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is dedicated in memory of Cory. 
> 
> 1.Although this story does belong in the Forget Me Not verse it is an alternate reality and does not hint at or in anyway effect the planned ending of the main fic. so you can read it without being spoiled.  
> 2\. Kurt and Blaine's relationship can be neatly summarized as highly dysfunctional. Don't try this at home kids.  
> 3.In real life earthquakes are not predictable. In real life radiation and bad science experiments don't create mutants with superpowers either. Science can do anything in science fiction. Roll with it.  
> 4\. Caitlyn Manilow is an OC I have borrowed from another story I'm writing so you will definitely see her again. Her fathers in this story are meant to be homages to her true parents so if they seem familiar, now you know. You're not crazy ;)

When Caitlyn was small (smaller than she is now) she remembered her daddy telling her she could be anything she wanted to be, even if what she wanted to be was something the boys told her girls couldn't be. She knew even then that he probably meant something like a fireman or a football player, but Caitlyn never wanted to be either of those things. The boys could have them.  
  
Caitlyn wanted to be a cowgirl. She had pictures of horses—real ones, not ponies because ponies with blue hair and sparkly tattoos weren’t real and therefore not as good—cut out from calendars and magazines that papa had helped her put up all over her bedroom, and she never went anywhere without her Jessie doll and the straw cowgirl hat her daddy had bought for her at the fair when she was only four. That was two whole years younger than six and a lifetime ago. She’d been a baby back then who didn’t know very much. She hadn’t even thought it was strange that she didn’t have a mother like all the other kids in her class.  
  
That afternoon at school a boy named Malcolm had told her that his mother said she didn’t have a mommy because her parents were bad. It made Caitlyn wonder what was so bad about them and if she might be bad too. She thought about it deeply, for both of her parents were smart and kind. Sometimes she didn’t like them, but that was only when they made her wash up after she played outside or put on something else besides the Saddle Club. They were never _bad_ , at least not to her.  
  
But then Caitlyn had realized something troubling. If she was bad, maybe that meant she wouldn’t know it if other people were bad.  
  
Papa was not happy when he came to get her at school that day. Principle Carrington had called him from work because Caitlyn had pushed Malcolm off the slide (and not the slidey part either). Teacher had been very upset when she had refused to sit in a time out or even explain why she’d done it. Caitlyn had wanted to. She just didn’t know how to talk about it. She didn’t mean to be bad but that was the whole trouble. She simply felt it.  
  
Papa had warned her Daddy would hear about it when he got home and Caitlyn didn’t say a word. She hugged Jessie tight to her chest and thought about galloping away on a horse to go live in a faraway kingdom.  
  
When Daddy got home he was disappointed in her for being bad and Caitlyn knew for sure that what you felt was what you were.  
  
*~*  
  
The kids at school didn’t like her after that because she’d pushed Malcolm and his arm was in a sling. Caitlyn didn’t like anything anymore. She spent long hours thinking about how she wanted to be a horse a whole lot more than she wanted to be a person. That would be really nice, she thought. It would be nice too if her heart didn’t hurt so much. It wasn’t very comfortable and she was tired of it, but a heart wasn’t something you could put in time out (she’d tried).  
  
When she felt bad Caitlyn sometimes forgot herself and bad things would follow (because maybe hurt just follows bad people around like they’re friends, when they really aren’t, and it should really just go away and bother someone else). Sometimes it was crying and scratches on her arms that she couldn’t remember putting there, and sometimes it was stuff like pushing or kicking that earned her trips to Principle Carrington’s office. Either way it was just proof that Malcolm was right, she knew she was being punished because she wasn’t right. But Malcolm had been wrong about one thing, there was nothing wrong with her daddies. She’d been watching and she hadn’t seen them do anything bad. They were just sad and really hurt that she wouldn’t talk to them.  
  
She wanted to. She just couldn’t figure out how to tell them that people like Malcolm and his mother hated them and it was all her fault.  
  
*~*  
  
Caitlyn was in school when it happened. She was sitting apart from the others, because Malcolm had pretended to be scared of her and all of the other kids were scared of him so they did whatever he did. They were as bad as sheep, but Caitlyn hadn’t fussed or cried because Daddy had driven her to school that morning and made her promise not to make trouble and to obey her teacher. He’d looked so upset at her silence that she’d promised even though she knew she couldn’t keep it.  
  
They were in the middle of reading hour when Principle Carrington’s voice came over the intercom.  
  
 _“Attention, all staff, we are now in code green. To repeat, we are now in code green. Teachers, please bring your students to the gymnasium in an orderly fashion. You will be instructed further upon arrival. Please proceed directly and immediately to the gymnasium.”_  
  
Miss Harveth had said they were going on a field trip and that it was going to be fun but Caitlyn had known she was lying because her hands were shaking when they helped Bianca put her backpack on and she looked white like her parent’s bed sheets. Miss Harveth didn’t _really_ think it was going to be fun, but she didn’t want them to know that.  
  
Caitlyn didn’t say anything. She’d promised to be good.  
  
*~*  
  
“Papa!” She was so relieved to see him she rushed over to him and clung fiercely to his neck when he lifted her up and clutched her to him.  
  
“Don’t make me go on the bus! I don’t want to go!” She begged him tearfully. She’d promised to be good and obey but she didn’t want to follow Miss Harveth and the other children on the bus when her stomach felt so bad and all the adults were acting so strange and whispering big words to each other and lying about field trips.  
  
She’d heard the second grade teacher whisper something to Miss Harveth about a ‘colossal earthquake’ and an ‘evacuation’—and she didn’t know what colossal or evacuation meant but she sure knew what an earthquake was.  
  
Caitlyn didn’t want to go on a bus with her teacher if there was going to be an earthquake. She wanted to be with her parents. One after another parents had been rushing into the gym and exiting with their children just as quickly and she’d been so afraid that hers would leave her with Miss Harveth because she’d been a lot of trouble lately.  
  
“Shh. I’ve got you baby. We’re gonna go get Daddy and we’re going to go visit Grandpa for a while,” Papa told her, and Caitlyn felt a bit better, though she refused to let go. Visiting grandpa with her parents while school earth quaked sounded okay to her but Papa looked scared, so maybe he was lying too.  
  
“Andrew, I just need you to sign these release forms before you go.” Miss Harveth shoved a clipboard under Papa’s nose, looking almost as relieved as Caitlyn felt. Papa signed them, but it wasn’t until she was buckled up in the car that Caitlyn finally felt safe. She was with Papa and soon daddy would be there too and they’d go to Grandpa’s and everything would be fine.  
  
That was the way it should be.  
  
*~*  
  
Papa _shouldn’t_ be scared but he was. They’d gone back to the house to pack and Caitlyn had started to get excited about the trip. Apparently earthquakes meant no school and evacuation meant they had to take a vacation. Vacations meant days of sun and fun with Grandpa at his house on the ocean.  
  
But Papa wasn’t excited like he should be. He was scared and he kept leaving the room to talk loudly on his cell phone and leaving Caitlyn to do most of her own packing, which wasn’t very much fun. She liked it when they did it together.  
  
“Caitlyn’s here with me. The school has probably evacuated by now Elijah…” Papa’s voice carried from the hallway and Caitlyn sighed, climbing up onto her bed and swinging her feet as she waited because if Papa was talking to Daddy this could take a while. “Well what was I supposed to do Elijah leave her there? Get in the car and hope the school busses make it out? No… no… Elijah! I don’t care how much time it takes. We’re not leaving the city without you. We either go as a family or we don’t go at all!”  
  
At Papa’s shout Caitlyn curled up into a ball and hugged her knees to her chest. That wasn’t right.  
  
Daddy didn’t want her to go on vacation with them? He was mad because Papa hadn’t left her at school. Why would he want her to stay here when the earth was going to shake and everything was canceled? He must be really mad with her.  
  
When Papa found her she was curled under her blankets with her pillow over her ears. Wordlessly he lifted the covers and pulled her into his arms. She resisted for a moment but the warmth of his arms was too comforting in the face of so much strangeness and she _needed_ him to hold her.  
  
“It’s okay baby,” he crooned as he rocked her, but Caitlyn knew it wasn’t true.  
  
“You were yelling at Daddy.” She sniffed. “He doesn’t want me anymore does he? I’ve been too bad.”  
  
“Sweetheart look at me. You could never be too bad.” Papa pushed her chin up and Caitlyn tried to obey but it was hard to see with her eyes stinging and gummy with tears. “Daddy and I love you. I love you _so_ much I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving for Grandpa’s without you. Daddy didn’t want you to miss your field trip because… well Daddy just wants to make sure we’re all away when the earthquake comes. There’s going to be a lot of traffic and it’s going to take us a long time to get out of the city. We should have left by now… but I don’t want to go anywhere without my Caitycat or my sweetheart. Who would give me goodnight kisses if I didn’t have you both with me?”  
  
That made sense to Caitlyn, Papa wouldn’t be able to sleep without his goodnight kisses and neither would she. And she wanted to believe that her parents still loved her, even though she’d broken her promise, but she still wasn’t sure. It was hard to be sure about anything when everyone was acting so strange. Watching the tears still dripping down her nose and chin Papa pulled her closer.  
  
“Do you remember when we got you your Jessie doll?” Papa asked, gesturing to the redheaded plush toy sitting atop Caitlyn’s suitcase. Caitlyn nodded and Papa smiled down at her. “You got so upset when Jessie’s owner left her in that box by the donation truck that you wouldn’t stop crying until Daddy promised to go out and get her. Do you remember why you were so upset?”  
  
“Because her Girl left her alone and just forgot about her. It was sad.”  
  
“It was. And why didn’t you want Jessie to be sad or alone?”  
  
“Because I love her!” Caitlyn insisted impatiently because Papa knew these things already. She didn’t understand why he was asking all these dumb questions.  
  
“And your daddy loves you. He went out in the rain and brought you back Jessie because he knew how much it meant to you. I still remember the way you kissed her and said she’d never be alone again. Well I want you to remember that Caitlyn. You’ll never be alone, so long as Daddy and I love you. And we’ll always, no matter what happens.”  
  
*~*  
  
What happened was that they put everything in the car and waited for Daddy. When he finally came he’d been wet because he’d run from his office downtown, which Caitlyn thought was silly at first when he had a car to drive, but she later thought was pretty smart when they got on the road and there were so many cars in the street that nobody could move. When Papa had said everybody in the city had to leave she hadn’t realized just how many everybodys there were. It would take forever for all of them to get out.  
  
Daddy said they had to walk, which was weird but wasn’t so bad because they weren’t the only family walking. It was kind of strange though, the whole day was strange, and all the honking from the cars and the way the dogs kept barking made her clutch her parent’s hands extra tight. But she wasn’t going to be scared because Papa and Daddy were with her and that at least was right. Everything was good about that. They were never going to leave her, no matter what happened (even if she was bad).  
  
*~*  
  
The first time the earth shook Caitlyn cried because it didn’t feel right and she didn’t want it to do that. Daddy picked her up and held her until it stopped shaking.  
  
“It’s just a tremor Caity, you’re fine. We’re all going to be fine.” Caitlyn didn’t believe him because his body was shaking and his voice sounded funny. He should stop. He should make the ground stop shaking too. She knew he could. If he told it to quit like he told her to quit misbehaving sometimes she was sure it would listen.  
  
“Look up in the sky Caity, what do you see?” Papa directed her and Caitlyn didn’t want to come out of the safe pocket in Daddy’s arms but curiosity got the best of her. She peeked up from Daddy’s shoulder and tilted her head up to see the sky and gasped.  
  
“Batman!” She crowed and beside her Papa grinned.  
  
“Yes that’s the Batlight. Whenever there’s trouble that light appears in the sky and Batman knows how to find the source of the trouble and stop it. He does a good job doesn’t he?” Caitlyn nodded eagerly, because she’d heard all sorts of stories about Batman. Everyone had. The police liked to say he was a bad guy sometimes but everybody knew that wasn’t true.  
  
“Bianca says Batman saved her uncle from that clown lady who wanted to kill everybody last summer.” She informed Daddy who was still trembling. She knew he was scared and just didn’t want to say so, probably so she wouldn’t be scared, but Caitlyn wasn’t scared anymore. “We don’t have to worry Daddy, because the Batman’s always watching over Lima. He can stop anything.”  
  
For some reason Daddy looked sad.  
  
“Not everything baby.”  
  
*~*  
  
Kurt knew the instant he wasn’t alone anymore. He’d been hiding out at the Iceberg Lounge for less than five hours but he was almost disappointed it had taken Blaine that long to find him. It had practically been child’s play escaping during the emergency evacuation of Arkham that morning and Kurt had been going rusty for going on two years now. It made him furious to think about the asylum, about being caged and stifled behind lifeless concrete and steel. It was agony of the endless sort. Torture. He owed Blaine for that, among other things.  
  
Kurt filled his glass with wine and turned to face the window of the small bedroom Oswald Chesterfield had allowed him to borrow while they all waited for the world to end.  
  
Well the citizens of Lima’s world was about to end anyway. Oswald had a helicopter posed to take them both out for a spin while the earth had its vengeance on Lima. The mobster wasn’t any friend of Kurt’s but it was amazing what a man would do for a kiss.  
  
Crouching in the window was a bat. Or you know, the man dressed as.  
  
“Hey Beautiful, took you long enough,” Kurt purred in greeting. Tilting his lips in a smile he asked, “Traffic slow?” as he sauntered back toward the bed. He could have laughed at the way Blaine’s eyes drank him in. Joker would have. She always accused Kurt of being a show off, especially when it came to Batman, but she of course wouldn’t get it. She liked to dress up like a clown for god’s sake. Kurt was a man who loved clothes who went back and forth between wearing leaves and asylum issue scrubs. So yes, he’d robbed the best store in the city before crashing at Ozzie’s place and stolen his reunion outfit, because he was damned if he was going to see Blaine again after two years in shapeless clothing.  
  
It was always nice to be appreciated. That was all he’d ever wanted from Blaine to begin with. Kurt sat on the bed and let his eyes be the ones to drag over Blaine’s frame this time, noting the marks of time in the lines around what was visible of his face beneath the mask, lingering on the shape and definition of his arms where he crossed them.  
  
Kurt smiled to himself. Well maybe appreciation wasn’t _everything_ he’d ever wanted from Blaine.  
  
“You’re so quiet Beautiful. Nothing to say after two long years apart?” he cooed, taking another sip of his wine. He tilted his head and couldn’t help the way his eyes narrowed as he guessed, “Cat got your tongue?”  
  
Yes, Kurt hadn’t forgotten about the fact that when Blaine had decided to ruin everything he’d planned and lock Kurt away forever that a certain cat eared squish faced jewel thief had been prancing around the city unchecked.  
  
“Smythe’s not important.” Blaine finally spoke. Kurt wished his first words hadn’t been ones to make him angry. He hated liars and Blaine knew that. He’d told Blaine never to lie to him. Kurt supposed he should have accepted that it was a promise Blaine couldn’t keep by now. Everybody lied after all.  
  
“Oh he isn’t?” Kurt asked, his smile turning acidic. “The way I heard it, it was really difficult for _the_ batman to put down a kitty cat. Surprising, don’t you think Darling, when you consider how easy it was for him to betray the man he was _supposed_ to love.”  
  
“Are you still the man I loved Kurt?” Blaine always lingered over the K, like he wanted to hold Kurt’s name on his tongue as long as possible and it always hit Kurt the same way, low in his chest like a punch. That hurt surprisingly even more than the past tense of his love.  
  
“It’s Ivy. Kurt Hummel is dead.” Kurt reminded him, clenching his fists as rage bubbled inside of him. Blaine didn’t get to make him weak, not after everything else; because he _wasn’t_ that boy anymore. He didn’t even know where Kurt _was_. Blaine didn’t acknowledge the statement.  
  
“Are you behind the earthquake?” Kurt’s hand tightened on his glass as Blaine’s question lay heavy between them. Of course that was all Blaine cared to talk about. That’s why he’d come as soon as he’d learned of Ivy’s escape. It had nothing to do with the fact that Ivy had as great a chance as anyone of _dying_ in an earthquake. Batman just wanted to know if he could stop it and save his precious city.  
  
“No. It’s all mother nature this time.”  
  
“Can you stop it?!” Blaine barked and two years ago there wouldn’t have been anything in the world Kurt would have traded to hear that desperation weeding through the Blaine’s voice. If anyone deserved to feel despair it was him. Kurt had felt it enough at his hands.  
  
“No.” For some reason he didn’t get the joy he wanted to feel saying that. “She listens to me, but even I can’t stop this Blaine. This is what mankind has wrought on itself with its poison and its plunder of the earth. Why are they always surprised when she bites back? I wouldn’t stop her even if I could.”  
  
The lower half of Blaine’s face twisted up beneath the mask he wore and a wordless cry of frustration tore out of him as he turned to strike the wall. It bothered Kurt that something about Blaine’s obvious suffering still had the power to pull something inside of him.  
  
“Of course you wouldn’t.” Blaine seethed, “You’re insane.” Blaine practically spat the word at him and Kurt’s hand tightened further on his wine glass. He didn’t so much as wince when it snapped, splashing his hand and the bed with the red liquor. It was too minor a pain to even register.  
  
“Don’t you dare judge me _Blaine Anderson_.” Kurt growled. “There’s nobody that has the right to judge me, you least of all!”  
  
“I don’t have time to play this game with you Ivy. I have to get people out of the city while there’s still time.” Blaine began striding for the window and Kurt’s anger surged. Apparently now that Blaine had his answers he was dismissed. He didn’t know why he was surprised. It had always been that way.  
  
“It’s a pity you’ve given this city your whole life Blaine, considering that it’s about to be wasted.” He smiled when Blaine stopped, because Blaine didn’t have to flinch for Kurt to know he’d been cut. “But I did warn you it would end that way Beautiful. I’m curious about how you feel, now that we’re at the end. Was it worth it? Are you finally satisfied that you did everything you could to take out your vengeance for your parents death on everyone you deem worthy of it, or do you still need more time? Perhaps you won’t know satisfaction until you’re too dead to know you aren’t satisfied.”  
  
Blaine’s breathes were ragged and Kurt was an expert at reading the pain in them. He closed his eyes and savored the sound because he refused to pity Blaine when it was his own fault that he suffered. He had traded their love for Batman and Kurt would not be the one to cry over regrets and whispers of dreams that had long abandoned them, not when Blaine had been the one to betray him and let it all go.  
  
At least never where Blaine could see.  
  
“You should get out while you can.” Blaine ignored the jibe as he paused at the window to say. Though it wasn’t said with any warmth the fact that it was said at all made some of Kurt’s anger cool in favor of a morbid sense of curiosity.  
  
“They’ve got cops stationed at every exit of this city.” Except for the sky Kurt knew. At Blaine’s scowl he scoffed wondering why he’d bothered to hope at all. “Though I admire your tenacity trying to keep me locked up I think I’ll take my chances with Mother Nature. She gets me.”  
  
The Batman was fast when he wanted to be. One minute he was by the window, the next he was looming over Kurt, pressing him down into the bed as he gripped both his arms and shouted down at him.  
  
“Kurt! If you don’t get out you could die!” Yes, Kurt could die in the earthquake, then there would be one less super villain stalking Lima wouldn’t there be. All of Blaine’s problems would be solved.  
  
But one look into Blaine’s desperate and violent gaze told Kurt that wasn’t true. The small, soft, vulnerable part of him that wouldn’t die (no matter how fervently he’d wished it would locked away in Arkham) glowed.  
  
Kurt ignored the pressure of Blaine’s tight grip on his arm and leaned toward him, closing the space between their lips until they were only a breath a part. He could see the hunger for it in Blaine’s eyes and despite the fact that Kurt could not know and would never know again if it was genuine want Blaine felt or the pheromones Kurt couldn’t help exuding, the knowledge that despite everything Blaine could not turn off the part of him that _wanted_ Kurt, warmed something inside of him that too often over the last decade had known nothing but cold.  
  
“So could you Blaine. But you won’t abandon Lima, not even now. You can’t. Who would you even be outside of this suit? You don’t know anymore and neither do I,” Kurt admitted and this close he could see every shift of emotion in Blaine’s eyes.  
  
It amazed him that he could still feel so much sadness. After everything he’d been through and everything Blaine had done to hurt him, Kurt could still feel so much empathy for the loneliness he knew Blaine felt. It had always been that way. Kurt had always understood Blaine better than Blaine understood Blaine, and Blaine had never quite been able to grasp that the reason why wasn’t mystical in the least. Kurt knew loneliness. Sometimes it felt like the only thing he’d ever known.  
  
“You could get past the police, we both know that.” Blaine responded, and it was a wonderful thing how golden and warm his eyes could be when they were soft and pleading. It almost made Kurt believe that nothing had changed. “Kurt you could leave Lima and start a new life.”  
  
He could go somewhere where nobody knew that Kurt Hummel had been declared ‘tragically insane’.  
  
Kurt had already thought about that. He knew it for what it was: a cruel fantasy. He could never have a normal life again, not when he couldn’t so much as touch another person without infecting them with spores, not when he could never kiss someone again without doing the same. He couldn’t even be in the same room as another person without pulling focus, and it wasn’t just because of his charm. Jason had made him a walking toxin. He either ensnared or killed. There was no middle ground; even with Blaine, but at least with him there had been love before he was Ivy. With Blaine he could pretend that his lack of focus and all that emotion he couldn’t seem to quite keep chained up wasn’t for Ivy at all, but for a man named Kurt Hummel who had died on them both years ago.  
  
“Would you come with me?” Kurt asked and when Blaine just lowered his impossibly long lashes and hid those beautiful eyes from him, Kurt knew it for the answer it was.  
  
When their lips touched Blaine stiffened, but did nothing more to prevent the ensuing kiss, and after a moment he melted against Kurt, releasing his arms with a soft moan. Kurt did not think of the way toxins were even now seeping into Blaine’s bloodstream, or the way Blaine’s heart would be picking up speed and his blood heating up.  
  
He closed his eyes and thought only of the warmth of Blaine’s arms wrapping around his waist and pulling him closer. He savored the hot and wet feel of his tongue sliding against his, for it was only here that everything felt right and good. He’d have given the Joker herself his soul if she’d appeared then and promised he could have the moment forever.  
  
He couldn’t. Blaine’s kisses got weaker and weaker, his lips going soft and listless against Kurt’s until their pressure faded altogether and he slumped against the taller man’s frame. Kurt caught him in his arms and lowered him to the bed with a soft sigh. He had a choice between planting his own control over a person’s mind when he kissed them or poisoning them with deadly toxins and Kurt hadn’t kissed Blaine to control him in years. Love made you so sentimental sometimes.  
  
It was sort of their thing, kissing until Blaine dropped, Kurt leaning over him to watch his chest heave and his lips go blue, both of them knowing that he held Blaine’s life in his hands. It was their own sort of twisted fairytale. Both of them waited to see if he’d give Blaine his life back with a kiss.  
  
“Tell me you love me,” Kurt whispered desperately hovering over Blaine’s trembling lips. “Sometimes I think I’d forgive you everything if you just kept that one promise. Tell me you love me even now.”  
  
Blaine couldn’t speak, but even fighting for his last breaths his eyes said he did. The trouble with that was Kurt hadn’t killed a man with a kiss yet whose eyes hadn’t said the same. But Kurt was writing this fairytale and in it he could play whatever role he wanted, even the prince who rescued the beautiful royal from a tower guarded by a dragon that seemed to wear both their faces.  
  
A kiss was a promise your heart made and a dream was a wish… he recalled those things sometimes. Did monsters have dreams? They must, for no one wished harder than him when he kissed Blaine again. Not that the antidote would work, he knew it would go through Blaine’s bloodstream in time; Kurt had the timing down to a science by now.  
  
No, Kurt wished for other things.  
  
He wanted to believe this ended. That pain didn’t just ravage people without relent until they were gone. He wanted to believe that there was beauty in the world that could be preserved if it was fought for, that there was something in him that life hadn’t yet twisted or broken, even if was as small as a seed. Kurt could make a seed grow.  
  
He would have made them a garden if he had just one seed.


	2. Chapter 2

When Mother Nature shook her fist at Lima she shook it till there was nothing left but cockroaches. Little angry bugs that came crawling out of the rubble and husks of their homes to shout at gods they were too naive to know didn’t exist. They did as people were wont to do. They collected in gangs and built nests, fighting viciously over territory and resources, returning human life to its primitive roots. Whoever had the biggest stick made the rules.  
  
Ivy had always made his own rules. He didn’t care that his prison mates were collecting people like sheep and creating a kingdom of chaos all around him. He’d never killed anyone for the money or the power he’d thought it would give him and he didn’t need a bunch of bleating terrified followers to boost his ego unlike some clowns he knew.  
  
He just wanted the garden back. So he went to the place where it had been and saw that the conservatory was nothing but twisted metal and broken glass like he’d expected. The plants were mostly dead but the earth of course was never barren. There was still life growing everywhere and that more than anything gave him hope. Though she could be terrible in her own way, the earth was a loving mother. Fire and smoke could rain from the sky, wind and waves ravage whatever stood in their paths, and always there were remnants of life ready to regenerate. A spring always came after winter.  
  
Kurt recalled a day in the greenhouse when he’d been young and untouched. He and Blaine had played like innocents and talked of love that they’d neither known nor understood. Blaine had called it a jungle. He had said that he would like to live there in it with Kurt.  
  
Kurt had never admitted to anyone that when he dreamed of a heaven it looked like a jungle where two boys could play and never be touched by anything but sunlight and rain.  
  
Kurt built paradise in the middle of the ruins of a city, but paradise turned out not to be perfect. He could never be that little boy again and Blaine would not agree to give up his mask to walk with him beneath the trees as he had once done, even if Kurt could have laid down his pride to ask.  
  
So he would lay on his bed of branches at night and stare out over the dark city, watching the flicker of fire lights in the distance and the occasional dance of a flash light beam as someone walked dangerously close to the edge of his kingdom. He would imagine where Blaine was that night. He was no doubt swooping through the dark swallowing up Lima’s pests. Since the earthquake there was a feast of them, enough to feed any hungry bat, enough to overwhelm him. Even more reason for Batman to expend himself, even greater chances that he’d come up against that one fly he couldn’t swallow. Maybe that was the reason for his sadness.  
  
Except… Kurt had always known that one day the Batman would die. What he hadn’t known was that paradise wasn’t paradise when you were alone.  
  
*~*  
  
Kurt knew all about the little two legged mice that snuck into his garden to munch on the vegetation that grew there. When he had built paradise he had built it so that it could sustain every life, and unfortunately human life couldn’t be excluded. Though there were fresh fruits, vegetables, and plenty of game to hunt within the forest Kurt would not allow the citizens of Lima to plunder it as they had every other great forest of the world. People were like locusts, they’d destroy everything he’d built if he let them. So Kurt killed the intruders and made examples of each of them, knowing that hunger and desperation would always keep them coming back, but that the rumor of the monster that lived within the forest would keep the plague at bay.  
  
One morning when the flowers whispered to him of a disturbance in the forest he rose from his bed in the trees to go about his usual mice chasing, only to find something not at all the usual. The little girl he found that day was unexpected.  
  
She was small and thin as a wisp, her hunger clearly evidenced by the gauntness of her cheeks and the dull light in her scared eyes. She wore what might have once been a school uniform. The tights were dirty and ripped, the bottoms pooling above her shoes like too big socks. Her knobby knees beneath the tattered rim of her skirt were muddy and scabbed, her olive skin covered in scratches and a few fresh looking bug bites. Her brown hair was mud caked and tangled in a truly distressing rats nest, but it was not the state of her hair that made Kurt pause as he hovered over her. He halted the vines that had wrapped around her body and begun to squeeze at her throat, staring intently into the wide terrified eyes staring back at him.  
  
He could not explain why he did not just snap her neck as he had done so easily to the others. He felt he knew her somehow. Or maybe it was simply that the browns and greens of her irises reminded him so suddenly and starkly of Blaine he almost felt the need to sit.  
  
“Who are you?” He demanded, unable to resist asking after the impossible, and the little girl choked on a whimper.  
  
“C-Caitlyn,” she managed to answer with some effort and Kurt sighed—not Blaine’s then— wordlessly instructing the vines to release their vise like grip on the child’s throat. She gasped and coughed for a moment and then on a shivering breath added, “Manilow. My parent’s names are Elijah and Andrew and we live on thirty eight north Oakdale Avenue.”  
  
Kurt was watching one of his _dionaea muscipula_ slide toward them eagerly through the brush. About the size of a small elephant he supposed the carnivorous plant was terrifying, but Kurt was rather fond of it. It wasn’t the monster it appeared, no matter how loudly the child screamed at the sight of it. It was just a plant and it ate to survive like any other creature.  
  
The child’s screaming ended abruptly as she broke out into sobs, choking out words he could barely make sense of until he caught her saying something about Oakdale Avenue again. Kurt raised a hand, halting the vines that were lowering her towards the fly traps open leaves. The girl was desperately reciting off her name and her family information he’d realized, because she was lost and afraid and no doubt it was what she’d been taught to do when she was lost on her own. It was a strange reaction to the terror of ensuing death but Kurt had seen enough people meeting death to know that the response wasn’t always rational.  
  
Santana would have laughed.  
  
Kurt did not, and the vines that were holding her moved away from the giant fly trap and lowered her to the ground. He couldn’t explain why he did it in the end. Perhaps it was because in her last moments Caitlyn had wished he’d put her in the car he didn’t have and would drive her down the streets that were all but obsolete now, back to a home that probably didn’t exist. If she was in his forest alone, there probably wasn’t any Elijah or Andrew for her to return to either.  
  
The girl wouldn’t last long on her own anyway, he figured. There was no need to add feeding small children to his plants on to his list of sins. Besides, her eyes were awfully pretty.  
  
*~*  
  
Seven days later and the girl had not died. Kurt could not tell whether this fact made him more curious about her or irritated that his predictions about her imminent demise had proved false. To be fair he wasn’t exactly helping his own case.  
  
He’d followed Caitlyn, just to watch, and observed her struggling to find food in the forest and jumping at every rustle of leaves in the middle of the night. The first night she’d cried herself to sleep calling for her Papa. He wondered at first why she did not call for a mother before he remembered that she had two fathers. Perhaps it was sentimental to spend so much time imagining Elijah and Andrew, for they were men he had not known and had no reference to build a fantasy around; but Kurt had known what it meant to love once, and to dream one day of having a family.  
  
He’d spent his adolescence dreaming up a future with Blaine—a warm home, sometimes with children and sometimes without, but always happy and always together—and he pictured it now again under the pretense of imagining the life this child had known before it had ended so tragically. It reminded him that he and Blaine had been boys just this age once, innocent with so much hope and potential inside of them. They might have grown up to have everything Elijah and Andrew had once had… they might have had it together. Their lives had been ravaged by unspeakable tragedies too. They’d been alone and they’d dealt the best they could but time had undoubtly bent them past the point of recognition.  
  
Now Caitlyn was alone. Except of course she wasn’t. Kurt was watching, and though he said it was only to see how she died the fact that he kept leaving her food wasn’t helping her get to the dying part.  
  
*~*  
  
Caitlyn hadn’t seen the monster of the forest in fourteen days and she was really glad about that. She’d heard stories about it eating people. Though the forest was one of the few places in Lima where food was growing and you didn’t have to eat a dog or a cat if you wanted to hunt for meat, nobody was brave enough to go in there unless they were really desperate.  
  
Papa had told her that a lot of people were desperate. None of the lights or the TV’s or anything else worked. No running water, no school, no jobs, no food, and no money.  
  
Before the earthquake her daddies had told her it was wrong to steal but now it was all anybody did. Daddy had told her that things were different now and that if there was a god like Bianca had always said, he would understand. Caitlyn had hoped so because they stole everything now. And people had always been trying to steal from them too and Daddy had gotten into a fight and there had been blood.  
  
Caitlyn shivered and closed her eyes, rocking back and forth. She didn’t want to think about the way those bad men had cut Daddy. Mobsters, Papa called them, men that Batman had put away before the earthquake who were free now. Free to rule the earth like the kings in her story books. They controlled everything, including the food, and some people made deals with them for protection but Papa had said to always stay out of their way and never get involved with them. Daddy had been trying to protect them when he got hurt.  
  
It made her stomach hurt really bad and her heart feel like it was sinking down to her toes thinking about her parents so she thought about the forest elf instead, the one who was going to feed her to the monster and then changed his mind. She’d been scared that the monster would come back and gobble her up in the middle of the night but it never had, and when her stomach growled too loudly, each morning she found a pile of fruit and vegetables had appeared sometime in the night next to where she slept.  
  
She’d decided that the elf—and she knew he was an elf because his ears were pointy and he wore leaves instead of clothes—was the one feeding her and that the forest monster must be his pet. So maybe it wouldn’t come back and eat her after all. She thought about him a lot, wondering where he had come from. Maybe there were other elves in the woods, a king and a queen and a whole elven court just like in Papa’s favorite books. She’d like that, though she didn’t think it was true. She hadn’t seen any other elves. Maybe they were just good at hiding. Or maybe the earthquake had killed them all.  
  
Even though Caitlyn sometimes wished she’d see him again she still shrieked and tried to run when she woke up one morning to find herself in a tree instead of on the ground where she’d fallen asleep, and the elf man next to her, watching her.  
  
She only realized she was in a tree when trying to get up and run made her fall out of it and she screamed as she fell; only to have the breath jerked out of her when a long vine wrapped around her middle and she came to a sudden stop.  
  
She cried, but she had to stop when the elf man told her to stop fussing. He promised he wasn’t going to feed her to the monster but Caitlyn wasn’t sure she believed him.  
  
“You need a bath.” He said, gesturing to the clothes in his hands. He must have gone outside the forest to get those. It made Caitlyn scared to think he’d left her alone inside with the monster. The bigger problem was how did he expect her to bathe without a tub? She was afraid to tell him no, however, in case he got mad and decided to bring the monster back or worse leave her alone again. But what if he got mad for not telling him about the tubs?  
  
“I can’t have a bath. None of the tubs work.” She finally got up the courage to say and that was the first time she heard the elf man laugh.  
  
*~*  
  
“Ivy, are you a prince?” She asked. She’d been dying to ask for weeks now, but she was afraid of making him angry. Caitlyn had seen what he did to people who made him angry and it made her… well it made her very scared. The elf was never mean to her when he visited, and sometimes he even let her follow him around the forest tending to the plants. Ivy knew everything there was to know about plants as any good elf should.  
  
But Caitlyn wasn’t sure he _was_ a good elf. He hurt people. She’d seen him do it and she’d cried and tried to run away because it wasn’t good at all, what he’d done to those people trying to pick food off the trees. She ate food off of them every day. Was he going to do that to her too?  
  
He’d found her and told her those people were bad, stealing from the earth and giving nothing back to it. That made sense to Caitlyn. She’d known all along that stealing was wrong and it had never made sense to her that it was different now just because nobody had money anymore. Ivy didn’t hurt her because she wasn’t stealing from the forest. Everything she ate was a gift and now that she knew it she wanted to give something back.  
  
She’d asked him to teach her how to say thank you and give something back to the forest and she’d never seen him smile that big. He was really pretty Ivy, like a painting, and the forest loved him. She knew it because all the flowers turned to great him when he walked by and the trees reached down to touch him, and everything seemed to come into bloom just to please him. He must be prince of the elves. Caitlyn would have bet her old Jessie doll on it.  
  
Ivy laughed at her, but it wasn’t the pretty laugh she liked. This one made her think of Papa’s sad eyes and Daddy’s pale face and the way they twisted their lips to make it look like they remembered how to smile just so she wouldn’t cry. “People don’t usually call me a prince.”  
  
“What do they usually call you then?” She asked with a pout because she’d been _so_ sure.  
  
“Sometimes poison. Usually monster,” Ivy answered with a scoff watering the blue flowers Caitlyn knew were one of his favorite. Second favorite to be exact, because he’d said it that exactly when she’d asked.  
  
“They think _you’re_ the monster of the forest?” She giggled and even though Ivy glared at her she still thought it was funny. “That’s pretty dumb. Why do you think they think that?”  
  
“Well I suppose they call me poison because they’re afraid I’ll infect them if I touch them, and monster because I feed them to a giant man eating plant.”  
  
Caitlyn giggled again because that made sense when Ivy said it like that. She’d been scared too when she first met Ivy. Except—she reached for Ivy’s arm and gripped it tightly, resting her cheek against his soft skin—he wasn’t poison at all. He was actually really nice to touch.  
  
“You should give more hugs. Then people would know you won’t make them sick when you touch them. And maybe if you didn’t feed everyone who stole from the forest to Bulls Eye they wouldn’t be so scared of you?”  
  
“Bulls Eye?” Ivy’s eyebrow arched as he asked. Caitlyn hoped he didn’t mind he’d named his pet.  
  
“You know, the plant you feed everyone to? I call it Bulls Eye because Diana muzippa is _really_ long and you always laugh at me when I say it.”  
  
“That’s because it’s Dionaea muscipula,” Ivy corrected with a grin. “But why would you name a plant Bulls Eye?”  
  
“It’s got spots!” She insisted and Ivy’s grinned widened. “And I still think you’re a prince. Maybe an evil witch put a spell on you and you just don’t remember.”  
  
For some reason that made Ivy very upset very suddenly. He got like that sometimes, which made Caitlyn think he was definitely under a witch spell. A person shouldn’t be nice one minute and wicked without warning. Vines shot up out of the ground and wrapped around her legs, yanking her off her feet. She hit her head and it hurt but she did not scream, she was too terrified to scream. The vines dragged her to Ivy’s feet and lifted her up until they were eye level and she shuddered when she saw his face. He did not look like a beautiful prince now. His face was twisted up with hatred and his eyes were wild and unfocused. Caitlyn got the weird feeling he couldn’t see her at all though the vines were holding her right in front of his face.  
  
“It was science not magic, Caitlyn, because there isn’t any such thing as magic!” He hissed at her. “A man turned me into this because he wanted to use me as a weapon. I killed him because I wanted him to die. I killed those other people for the same reason. They have every right to be afraid. _You_ should be afraid.”  
  
She was. But that didn’t make her stop wanting him to stop being so mean to himself.  
  
“Those people were bad,” she reminded him. “They were stealing from the forest.”  
  
“I killed them, Caitlyn. Do you think they thought they deserved that? What if it had been one of your precious fathers?”  
  
Caitlyn felt her heart drop to her toes again and her eyes well with tears. She tried to shake the image of Bulls Eye eating her Daddy and her Papa out of her head but it wouldn’t go. She knew it wasn’t true. Daddy had gotten injured and without a doctor he’d gotten really sick and never woken up one morning. Papa… Papa had told her to hide when the Joker’s men had found them hiding out in what was left of the Library. She’d heard him get shot and thinking about it hurt so much she didn’t feel like she could breathe, so she just never thought about it.  
  
Only now she couldn’t stop.  
  
She sobbed like a dam had been ripped open inside of her. She called for them both but they never came. When arms wrapped around her and held her tightly they were not the right arms but they were warm and safe. Ivy held her and he cried into her hair.  
  
“I’m sorry.” He said over and over, and Caitlyn believed him.  
  
*~*  
  
“Papa promised that no matter what happened I wouldn’t be alone, because they loved me. But he was wrong because they died.” Caitlyn whispered and it took Kurt by surprise. He’d carried her to their nest in the trees and she’d fallen asleep cradled against his chest, or so he’d thought.  
  
“I don’t think that’s right,” he heard himself reply, his voice still rough from the tears he’d shed earlier. “I don’t think death stops love. I think love transcends time and space and universes, even death.”  
  
“Like magic?” She asked, her voice tiny but hopeful in the dark. He wanted to give her hope, something of power for her young heart to believe in, to help preserve her where he had not been preserved. Perhaps it was hypocritical after the violent way he’d reacted to her theories about evil spells and witches, but Kurt for all that he was a scientist had always been something of a romantic. He’d forgotten that about himself somewhere down the line. Something about being near Caitlyn made him feel as if he could be that man again.  
  
“Maybe love is what we confuse for magic. It’s just a power we don’t understand, so what can’t it be capable of when you really think about it? Your Papa promised you wouldn’t be alone right? And you’re not alone. You’re here with me and that’s… that’s something of a miracle actually. I’m not a good person.” At least not anymore. He hadn’t been overly concerned with being human let alone humane in a very long time.  
  
“Do you think he sent you from heaven,” Caitlyn sat up to peer curiously down at him in wonder. “Like an angel?” Kurt laughed. He’d gone from a prince to an angel in one day and that was hopelessly naïve thinking but also sort of nice in its own way. All of it was nice. Caitlyn looked at him with bright open eyes and the affection she offered so willingly was unaffected by anything but youth. He was drinking it in like a desert starved weed. It was weak but he still knew it to be true.  
  
“I’m not an angel. Believe that if you don’t believe anything else I tell you.” He bit his lip and considered her as her mouth drooped. He knew she would have liked to believe her parents love had sent him from heaven or some other trite thing to watch over her. Maybe it wasn’t good to take that hope away. “I think… maybe when we’re truly loved something of that will always linger on. I don’t think love fades away like bodies do. Maybe love stays here and generates more love so there’s always love going around. It’s like the plants. No matter how bad the fire there’s always green poking up out of the ash sooner or later. Maybe I’m your bit of green.”  
  
Maybe she was his too.  
  
“I think you’re right. I think love is what makes the flowers grow too.” She said, the wonder of it shining in her eyes and his heart squeezed. Maybe to let him know this tiny child had somehow snuck past his defenses to get a grip on it.  
  
“What makes you say that?” He heard himself ask, stroking her brown hair where it curled over her ears.  
  
“Because they like to be touched, and fed, and sung to, just like people.”  
  
*~*  
  
Kurt had wanted a seed. He was amazed it had taken him nearly a year to realize that if there was ever to be any proof that there was something good within himself, something good within the world, that Caitlyn was it.  
  
When he found her that day she was lying near the stream, showing Nathan how if he waited long enough the flowers would braid themselves into his hair. Nathan lived with them now too, because seeds had the funny habit of planting roots growing up and spreading more seeds.  
  
“They aren’t moving,” the prepubescent boy complained, eyeing the flowers weaving themselves into Caitlyn’s hair with jealousy.  
  
“You have to earn their trust.” Kurt reminded him and Nathan’s eyes grew wide with excitement when he caught sight of him. The boy ran to greet him and Caitlyn kicked her feet impatiently on the ground as she waited for the flowers to unweave themselves, wary of injuring them. When the last one had settled back into its place she shot up and raced after Nathan.  
  
“Ivy! There was a man in the forest today!” Caitlyn rushed to inform him. The children helped him keep the forest clean, but they tended to get upset when he fed people to the fly trap so Kurt had settled for merely chasing people from the premises these days. The children seemed to enjoy it.  
  
Nathan nodded, his brown eyes worried as he informed Kurt, “He wasn’t like the others though. His clothes weren’t old and stuff like most people on the outside. He didn’t look like one of the mob lords though either. And Caitlyn almost blew our cover.” As he said that he glared at the younger girl and the brunette stuck her tongue out at him.  
  
“I thought he was my Papa. He looked like him from far away but he wasn’t him.” Kurt felt a pang of sadness for the girl. He knew how much she still missed her parents. Both the children did, which was why he had brought them gifts. But first came first. He did not like the news that a strange man had been in his forest, especially someone dressed nice enough to be a crime lord. This was his territory and he wasn’t giving it up.  
  
“What did he look like?” Kurt asked, directing the question to Nathan who was older and had hopefully observed more but Caitlyn grabbed his hand and answered before the boy could speak.  
  
“He was beautiful Ivy, like a prince—”  
  
“What is it with you and princes?” Nathan grumbled but Caitlyn went on like she hadn’t heard him.  
  
“He had dark hair and a really kind smile. He was worried about me and asked me where my parents were. He said it wasn’t safe for me to be here alone. He was just trying to help me when _Nathan_ showed up and started throwing rocks and the trees started chasing him away like he was one of the thieves. You should yell at him because he was mean to Blaine when he was only being nice!”  
  
“He was part of the mob dung brain!” Nathan shot back and Caitlyn opened her mouth to shout something back at him but both children silenced when vines shot out of the ground to grip their arms in chastisement. They watched him warily, and it did not escape Kurt’s notice that Nathan was posed to pull Caitlyn behind him if he had to. It pricked at him, but Nathan hadn’t lived with them as long and the boy was not quite his yet the same way Caitlyn was.  
  
Some things just needed time. More pressingly, it hadn’t escaped his notice either that Caitlyn had spoken a name he’d never expected her to know.  
  
“He said his name was Blaine?” Kurt asked the girl and she nodded wordlessly. Kurt almost didn’t dare to believe it. Blaine wasn’t so uncommon a name but he knew without a doubt it was his Blaine but he couldn’t fathom it. Blaine had been in his forest? He had expected a visit from the Batman sooner or later, what with all the people who disappeared coming into it, but frankly Batman had bigger fish to fry than the monster of the forest. He had never expected that Blaine would come walk his wood uncostumed, to come to him not as Batman but Blaine Anderson. He couldn’t remember the last time he had.  
  
“You know him?” Nathan asked after a long stretch of silence.  
  
“I thought I did,” Kurt murmured in reply.  
  
“I’m sorry we ran him out of the forest.” Nathan murmured with a guilty gulp. “We didn’t know he was someone you knew.”  
  
“He’ll come back.” Kurt wasn’t sure which one of them he was reassuring.  
  
“What are those in your hand Ivy?” Caitlyn asked, having noticed the bulbs he held clutched in his hands. Remembering his gifts he put away thoughts of Blaine for the time being and smiled expectantly at them both as he extended the bulbs in an open palm.  
  
“Spathiphyllum bulbs,” he revealed to them, the vines holding their arms releasing them as they approached him curiously. Caitlyn was first, Nathan following more hesitantly. “They are called Peace Lilies, though they aren’t true lilies at all. That’s why they are beautiful but not as delicate as most.”  
  
“What are they for?” Nathan asked.  
  
“For you guys. They will protect you from negative energy and cleanse the air of harmful toxins and radiation. They help give the earth balance, Spathiphyllum, that’s why their name means ‘peace and prosperity’. In South America, one of the places they come from, they are a symbol of rebirth. Your lives are not what they were before. You know what it means to lose now and I know there is a lot of pain in that. I know at times you may feel hopeless, because I know I do. But then I remember that these guys exist, and what they do to make the planet better for us, to make a home for us, and I think that if there’s something like that growing here, maybe that’s enough reason to hope.”  
  
Caitlyn nodded eagerly and he smiled at her. Nathan stared at the bulbs with a dubious expression. Kurt sighed softly.  
  
“Of course they’re not magic. They won’t heal everything. I don’t think there’s anything that can do that, for any of us, but they will be beautiful and you will have to care for them. Caring for something else can be its own sort of healing.” He laid a bulb in each child’s hand and closed their fingers over it. “I guess I want that to be true for you. I want it to be true for me. And I want you to have something of your own here in the forest. Everything else here thrives because I encourage it to, but I wanted you to know that you can do it too. You can be a part of making things bloom. You do it for me every day.”  
  
“How?” The dark skinned boy asked skeptically. “I’ve never planted anything. And I over watered your roses.”  
  
“He’s talking about love Nathan!” Caitlyn stage whispered rolling her eyes at the older boy. “He loves us.”  
  
Kurt wasn’t sure that was what he was saying at all. He hadn’t known what it was to love someone in a very long time.  
  
Then again, maybe that was why it felt like spring when before things had been dark and cold like a winter.  
  
“Go on,” he waved them both away with a laugh. “Go forth minions and plant.” Caitlyn giggled and threw her arms around him and Nathan’s lips finally cracked in a smile, excitement beginning to overpower his skepticism. They ran off together, arguing loudly over the best places to plant their bulbs and Kurt watched them.  
  
Did monsters love? He had no idea. But he was beginning to suspect that _he_ at least might.  
  
Life had a funny way about it. It was almost enough to make a skeptic believe in anything, even something as audacious as hope.  
  
“Ivy look! Someone cut up this tree!” Caitlyn’s shout interrupted his thoughts like a cold bucket of water and Kurt felt a spark of rage. How had someone managed to get this far into his forest to cut up one of his trees! It was only when he’d reached the children and the tree in question that he saw it.  
  
Someone had taken a knife and carved the words: Even Now.  
  
He laid a hand over the carved words, feeling the ache and groan of the wood beneath his palm and something else tremulous and indescribable shifting around inside of him.  
  
“What does it mean?” Caitlyn asked, peering up at him quizzically.  
  
Kurt was too afraid to admit that it might mean hope. He was afraid that if he acknowledged it that beautiful hope that was being planted within him would be snatched away as it had been every time before.  
  
And still, he smiled.  
  
“It means your prince is either very brave or very stupid Caitlyn.”  
  
He stared at it a moment longer, the smile widening on his face.  
  
Maybe they both were.  
  
-Fin-

**“Expect hope to be rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.”** _Sarah Ban Breathnach_


End file.
